Sunday, 12 February 2012

MADRAS HIGH COURT


Here I am, just hopped on the train from Madras (Chennai) for the 23 hour journey to Goa. I'm at the end of my crazy two-week train journey around south India, with only three weeks left in the country.

The trip (the past two weeks) has been amazing. The two states I visited, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, were very different but both fascinating.

I want to take a minute to talk about the food. First of all, both the people of both states take food very seriously, which I always appreciate. I found I remarkable that the food could be so drastically different from anything we are accustomed to in the United States. The Indian food I've seen in the US or in England is always north Indian food. Here in the south, the typical meal consist of a starch, like appam (rice pancake) or iddly (a fluffy pillow made from rice paste) or dhosa (crispy crepe made from potato? Or wheat or rice, maybe?) or pangol (a grain-maybe amaranth cooked with cashews and spices and served either sweet or salty) and then a variety of vegetable sauces to dip your starch into with your fingers (right hand, please. The left is for cleaning your bottom instead of toilet paper). Then there is also a soupy dal served as well (usually lentils or some other beans). All this is usually served on a banana leaf. Especially in Kerala, the food is amazingly spicy. But I don't mean this in a bad way, as we often do in the west. The food was not necessarily "hot" but always full of flavour. Kerala is all about growing spices and trading them with the world, as they have since the time of King Solomon (hence the origin of Jew Town) and they are very serious about their spices. There were a few things I didn't like, but mostly all the food was magical. Sometimes there were things on my plate that were so strong in flavour that I couldn't tell if I liked them or not. Clearly these things were meant to be taken just a finger tip at a time with the other foods, not swallowed all at once. But that's what I mean about the cuisine being so different that I didn't even always know how to eat it. Sometimes I would look at the food on the banana leaf of the person at the next table and ask what it was called so I could order it. Otherwise, I would usually just order a couple if things blindly (if there was a choice, many places just had you sit down and they start bringing you food, like thali, further north). But in thali or northern Indian dishes, like curries, there is usually a main ingredient, like mixed veg, or peas, or chicken or fish, and then a sauce built around it (curry or masala, for example). My impression of south Indian food was that spice is king, and each of the things ladled onto my banana leaf was built around a particular spice or combination of spices. It was always clear that a lot of work went into these meals.

Now, I'll admit that sometimes this food (especially the more rustic versions, shall we say) does a real number on my delicate American tummy, but I haven't been sick and for the most part, the parade of flavours has been worth the gastric inconvenience. The exception, of course has been the train food, which is obviously mass produced without much care and not very good. The better alternative has been to stick your head out the train door at a station stop and buy food from someone on the platform. This is often something fried, like a vegetable samosa, and often is followed by a stomach ache. Boy, how I wish I had learned the Tamil words for "Have you changed your cooking oil recently?"

Often, when people would stop me and speak to me on the Chennai Metro, for example, they would ask me if I have tasted their food. I would always say, "Of course! I love your food!" They always find this very gratifying.

Chennai can be a challenging place. The drivers, as in all of Tamil Nadu are crazy an very aggressive, so walking anywhere is treacherous. Also, you are always being pushed and shoved anywhere you go, often in a rather aggressive way. But I found that there I a certain flow to the place, and once I found that, it wasn't so bad. I did walk a lot and I took local trains around the city (standing room only, usually with someone's elbow in your ear and someone else leaning on your back) and I found that as pushy and rushed as everyone was, if you asked a stranger for directions, he would ALWAYS stop and give you directions. I just don't thing this would be the case in New York. Now, granted, these directions were not always correct. In fact, I found sometimes that when someone would direct me to go that way, I would instinctually go the other way and find what I was looking for. Perhaps there were two possible ways to go, and they thought I might enjoy the long way...

I also loved that so many men in chennai wore traditional Indian clothing (lunghis- made from madras plaid, naturally). It is such a great look. In Kerala, the men in rural areas all wore lunghis, but in the city, no one did. No one but me, that is.

P.S.

One of my favorite things about traveling by train in India, is that they provide cum-beds free-of-charge. 






These girls looked so great all dressed in identical saris. 















How could you not love Lukshmi, the elephant?






नमस्ते

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